When Grief Waits: How Therapy Helps Us Feel What Was Once Too Much

Grief doesn’t always come when it’s expected. Sometimes it arrives years later - triggered by a moment, a relationship, or a silence that opens a door we didn’t fully know was closed. This is delayed grief. The psyche, under strain, finds ways to survive what once felt unbearable - often by keeping intense emotions cordoned off.

We understand this as protective. The mind defends against what it can’t yet process. But those unacknowledged feelings don’t disappear. They wait - often showing up as anxiety, compulsions, or a vague sense of being cut off from something vital.

Therapy creates a space structured enough to begin approaching what was once too much. Over time, the consistent presence of another can be internalised - giving us the safety to feel what was buried. There’s no forcing. But the invitation is there: to slowly unpack what’s been stored away.

Many people find ways to avoid feeling - through alcohol, compulsive structure, work, sex, sport, even success. Some methods are more destructive than others, but all serve the same purpose: to block access to emotion. And yet, to feel fully alive, we need the whole repertoire - from the depths of grief to the heights of joy. We don’t really get to access the joy without having felt our pain.

Therapy, at its best, is not just about pain though of course. It’s about returning access to the full range of a well lived life.